Announcing Representation of Donald Locke
The artist’s first presentation will be exhibited at Frieze Masters 2024
3 October 2024
Donald Locke, ‘Twin Form (black interior)’, 1978, ceramic, 42 x 57 x 27 cm (16 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 10 5/8 in) © Estate of Donald Locke; photo: Michael Brzezinski
Alison Jacques announces representation of Guyanese artist Donald Locke (b.1930, Stewartville, Guyana; d.2010, Atlanta, USA).
Alison Jacques will present a solo stand of Donald Locke’s work at Frieze Masters 2024. This presentation anticipates Locke’s forthcoming UK museum survey exhibition at Spike Island, Bristol (31 May – 7 September 2025), touring to Camden Art Centre, London and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. Locke’s work is currently on view at Tate Britain as part of ‘Ideas into Action 1965-1980’, following his inclusion in ‘Life between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now’, Tate (2022).
Donald Locke frequently drew upon the folklore, myths and poetic aspects of Guyana. Inspired by natural forms and the human body, he explored issues around history and identity. The Frieze Masters presentation spans 26 years of Locke’s career, including his renowned Plantation Series (1972-76). These sculptural metaphors for the plantation system of labour, wealth and social structure question the system whereby one group of people are kept in economic and political subjugation by another. Locke grew up at a time when Guyana was still a British colony, and at the time was defined by a plantation system. Political and social observations became central to Locke’s practice over the next five decades of his work.
One part of the Frieze Masters presentation will focus on Locke’s first love: ceramics. Locke studied this medium at Bath Academy of Art, where he was introduced to non- traditional ceramics; sculptural rather than practical, with shapes and colours that echo the natural world. Locke went on to make ceramics that were politically charged and empowered by a need to express a different history. Many of the ceramic works exhibited at Frieze Masters are anthropomorphic sculptures, inspired by organic forms and the human body, cast in ceramic and sometimes aluminium.
The final series of works within the presentation are paintings and collages which Locke made in the 1990s. His paintings combined heavy paint, photographs, cloth, wood, metal and found objects mounted on canvas. Their loaded, erotic and sometimes violent symbolism brings to mind haunting memories from the past, related to slavery, identity and sovereignty.
Donald Locke is included in major UK collections including Tate; Victoria and Albert Museum; Glasgow Art Museum; National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.